One generous turn inspires another (Spring, 2010)

April 23, 2010

Drs. Jonathan Kotch and Marcia Angle share the stage at the School’s 2009 World of Difference dinner.

A tradition at the School’s annual World of Difference dinner, held for donors who give at the Rosenau Society* level and higher, makes for a poignant stage picture. When a new endowed professorship is established, both recipient and donor are presented with a UNC captain’s chair to mark the occasion.

In November 2009, the stage chairs were shared by Marcia Angle, MD, alumna of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Professor Jonathan Kotch, MD, faculty member at the School since 1978.

Marcia and her mother, Dr. Carol Remmer Angle, established the Carol Remmer Angle Endowed Professorship in Children’s Environmental Health. Kotch was selected for the professorship, an honor acknowledging his many contributions to children’s health and safety.

Like Kotch, both Drs. Angle have long histories of service in public health.

Marcia Angle is now an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and serves on our School’s Advisory Council.

Carol Remmer Angle’s half-century career in medicine includes many highlights. In the 1950s and ’60s, she founded one of the country’s first poison control centers, opened one of the first pediatric renal dialysis units in the U.S. and conducted novel research on environmental causes of lead poisoning among children. In the late 1960s, she became one of the first female chairs of an academic medical department in the nation.

“In endowing the award, Marcia and Carol Angle recognized that children are powerfully shaped by their social environments, families, schools, communities and societies,” Kotch said at the 2009 World of Difference dinner.

“We are absolutely thrilled to have a scholar and activist of Dr. Kotch’s caliber as the first CRA Distinguished Professor of Children’s Environmental Health,” Marcia and Carol Angle said. “He is renowned not just for his impressive research accomplishments but also for extensive service to the community, state and country.”

Kotch, in turn, has pledged to endow a scholarship to fund a summer internship for a maternal and child health student.

“Carolina attracts the best and the brightest, and those of us on the faculty are challenged to respond in kind,” he said.

Kotch’s scholarship is named in honor of his mentor, the late Jimmie Lee Rhyne, MD, a pediatrician who served many years as head of the N.C. Division of Public Health’s maternal and child health branch.

“It gives me great pleasure to recognize Dr. Rhyne’s passion for doing the right thing for children by naming this scholarship in his memory,” Kotch said.

– by Linda Kastleman

* Named in honor of Milton J. Rosenau, MD, first dean of the UNC School of Public Health, The Rosenau Society recognizes alumni and friends who give $1,000 or more in unrestricted funds to the School each year. For more information, see www.sph.unc.edu/giving.

Carolina Public Health is a publication of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. To view previous issues, please visit www.sph.unc.edu/cph.